Creda C366E Catal SIDO 00

...had this electric cooker, a Creda C366E, for about a year now and over all I am delighted with it in that it serves its main purpose excellently - it cooks food extremely well. However there are a few niggling things with it. We bought it from ETS which is the south west's largest independent retailer and it was a very good price. I can't remember exactly but it was over £100 cheaper than in Comet. This was because ETS also sell appliances which ...
...to find what the problem was with this cooker and the only thing we could find was a bit of a scratch on the side but as it is a free standing slide in type of cooker you cannot see this when it is in place.

I'm please I have taken the time to write this review as I've learned a few things about it I didn't realise! Firstly, when I looked up the instructions I see it is made by Hotpoint. I wouldn't have bought it if I had realised ... more

I've had this electric cooker, a Creda C366E, for about a year now and over all I am delighted with it in that it serves its main purpose excellently - it cooks food extremely well. However there are a few niggling things with it. We bought it from ETS which is the south west's largest independent retailer and it was a very good price. I can't remember exactly but it was over £100 cheaper than in Comet. This was because ETS also sell appliances which are new but are slight seconds. It was difficult to find what the problem was with this cooker and the only thing we could find was a bit of a scratch on the side but as it is a free standing slide in type of cooker you cannot see this when it is in place.

I'm please I have taken the time to write this review as I've learned a few things about it I didn't realise! Firstly, when I looked up the instructions I see it is made by Hotpoint. I wouldn't have bought it if I had realised as I swore I would never buy another Hotpoint after a lengthy problem with a vacuum cleaner years ago! However this has made me change my mind as it does make cooking a pleasure!

Mine is a sleek black colour and people comment that it looks good. It is also in energy efficiency group A. It is 90 cm high so fits in well with the rest of the kitchen units and it is 60 cm wide. I prefer the wider cookers as there is more room to put big saucepans on. This one seems quite spacious.

The hob is ceramic with 3 solar-glo plates and one double solar-glo plate. These heat up rapidly and I find it really easy to keep clean using special hob cleaner. I had never had this type of hob before and I was worried about burning myself not realising that it had been on recently but when it is on you quickly see the red glow and a red warning light comes on until it cools down. It has a timer (clock/minute minder) which I use all the time which is easy to set and use and which bleeps loudly until you turn it off. It also has an illuminated clock which you can see without turning the kitchen light on and an automatic oven timer operation but I have never tried that. One thing I don't like about it is the control knobs as until you get really used to them it is really difficult to know which way they are pointing. At first I toyed with the idea of putting a dab of red nail varnish just to act as a pointer but I thought this would look terrible and now I've got used to them!

The cooker has a double oven. The top oven is a conventional oven with a twin variable grill. It comes complete with a grill pan. I use this quite a lot for both grilling and cooking small dishes that don't take very long. It works really well but takes slightly longer than the main oven both to cook and to heat up.

The main oven is fan assisted and cooks superbly well. It is fast so you have to allow less time than in a conventional oven. It has stay clean side panels and comes complete with a meat pan which is surprisingly small. Whilst the inside of the oven stays clean the door on mine looks bad as drips have got down inside the glass and you can't clean them off. I nearly went back to complain about this but didn't get around to it. From writing this review I realise now that you can unscrew the glass and clean it that way but that seems a bit of a performance! I've also just realised from the instruction book that the main oven has an 'S' setting specially designed to reduce energy usage for slow cooking. You can also use this to keep food warm and warm plates. I'm now going to try this out! Just show you should read the instructions.
 

...less